Mapping ITIL/MOF Change Management process to the features of System Center Service Manager

Hi. I’m Bill Anderson, a technical writer for System Center Service Manager. I’ve been working with PM Vladimir Bakhmetyev to put this blog post together to show you a little about how you can use change management features found in Service Manager to help model process frameworks such as MOF.

Figure 1. MOF Change and Configuration Management SMF diagram

The Figure 1 shows the MOF Change and Configuration Management service management function (SMF) processes. For this blog post, I’ll focus on the first process in the MOF Change and Configuration SMF called “Baseline the configuration”. In Service Manager, some of these processes are mapped to the fields and features on the Change Request form (see Figure 2 below), others are modeled by a customizable set of manual or review activities on the Process tab. In later blog posts, I’ll fill-in the blanks for other processes.

Process 1: Baseline the Configuration – Identification and understanding what will be affected by a change

1.Define the configuration data to track – This activity is a manual step. From any configuration item or work item, you can create a new change request. This will open a new change request form and automatically associate that item with the new change request. Services, computers, printers, software, and knowledge articles are all configuration items. They all can be linked to the change request and are identified as “Configuration items to change” (See Figure 3 below).

In addition to that, you can link work items such as Incidents, Change Requests, and Problem Records to the change request as “Related items” (See Figure 4). So, notice the difference between configuration items to change and related items.

2.Audit the CMS content. This activity can be performed manually by the Change Initiator or Change Owner.

Figure 3. “Configuration Items to Change” field on the change request form

Figure 4. “Related Items” tab on the Change Request form

In the next post I’ll describe mapping the activities in the Change Management’s Process #2, “Initiate the Change”.

Note: This blog post and diagram apply to the Beta1 Refresh version of Service Manager. This information might change in subsequent versions of Service Manager.